Once upon a time, I thought that I might give RYR a try on a no risk trip, just to see for myself what all the fuss is about. So I got a £17 return day trip to Glasgow. Sorry, I mean Prestwick. Fly up from STN mid-morning on a Saturday, come back on the first legal return, back at STN in good time to go to Jamie Oliver's parents' pub and see whether that's as good as it's cracked up to be.
On the way up, it was a bit foggy. Nothing much to worry about, had heard aircraft inbound for LHR overhead my place in the morning, etc. Checked in at STN, no problems mentioned.
So we went through to the departure area and got a coffee, and then noticed a delay notification to our flight, amongst others. Funnily enough, the scheduled carriers seemed to be managing reasonably normal ops, but the low fares were socked in. So we had breakfast, then a walk and a shop, then lunch. Some later flights went out closer to schedule, but earlier flights including ours were still delayed - probably, I suspect, because of some aircraft had been affected first thing but others hadn't.
Finally it got to the point where we knew that even if our flight left right then, it would not leave us enough time to check in for the return flight back from PIK - which, it seemed, was going to be on time if the outbound flight of that aircraft from STN was anything to go by. So we decided to try to call it a day and see whether RYR would refund us our tickets.
Easier said than done. RYR has no customer service airside. There is a phone, but that happily produced an engaged tone. After some discussion with the security people, I negotiated my way back through security to the check-in area and made my way to the RYR ticket desk. That had a queue which snaked almost outside the building and looked like it would be about two hours long.
Back through security to airside, get on the mobile phone, call their res number - desperation by this stage. Fortunately, it only takes about 10 minutes of holding to get through to a person - and to give her credit, the process of organising a complete cancellation and refund was approved (presumably by a supervisor) within a couple of minutes, once the agent could see the booked itinerary and the flight delays. And to give RYR credit, the money was back in my bank account in 4 days.
So that was my one and only attempt to go anywhere on RYR. It yielded a large bag of airside shopping at tax free prices, which made up a bit for the petrol and parking costs. And I'm sticking to BA in the future.